Category: Heal from Abuse
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By reviewing her roots she continues to grow
Unraveling her ancestors’ tangled emotional complexity would have required going back in time and spending years in therapy with each of them. But even though there were no complete answers, the memoir did offer a meta-message. The memoir affirms that looking back to the past is one of the tools we humans use in order…
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Getting to Know Memoir Author Sue William Silverman
Getting to know someone intimately naturally invokes the familiar euphemism. To “know” someone in the Biblical sense means having sex with them. It turns out that Sue William Silverman has been on a lifelong journey to understand the difference between these two types of knowing. And her three memoirs lead us on the evolution from…
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In Memoirs, Misery is Simply a Step toward Hope
So I inched my way into Here I Stand, ready to bolt if it didn’t feel authentic or if I felt strangled by helplessness or despair. The deeper into the story I traveled, the more I trusted this author to maintain authorial control, guiding me through difficulties and then back out to safety. She achieves…
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A Memoir That Relieves the Lifelong Burden of Shame
After I became a therapist, I quickly realized that reenactment is quite normal. We are often pulled into life situations in which we attempt to replay circumstances of our childhood. The phenomenon often drives us to select partners uncannily reminiscent of our family history.
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Recovering Self-concept after Trauma
Identity ought to be a stable thing. Once you find it, you should be set for life. But in reality, your ideas about yourself undergo continuous adaptation. We all adapt to the slow changes that unfold over years. And sometimes, our peaceful self-image is threatened by assaults so deep and swift they shake the foundations…
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Fearlessly Confessing the Dark Side of Memory in this Memoir of Sexual Abuse
Some dark memories are so compelling they draw you in and frighten or upset you. If you try to seal them back in their crypt, they remain squirming in the dark. Or you can face them fearlessly, and stay with them until you can shape them into a story. By using your words to describe…
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Writing for Community – or – When Going Public Can Save Dignity and Lives
The testimonials served a different purpose than most memoirs. Rather than being selected for literary merit or completeness of story, these pieces were selected for their moral courage and willingness to communicate. And while this particular book may not reach the best seller charts, its effects radiate far beyond these particular individuals.
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Mothers and Daughters Don’t Always Mix
This book demonstrates the power of persistence. By crafting the story until she got it right, Linda Joy Myers discovered amidst the wreckage of that little girl’s childhood an intact human being, complete with courage, confidence, and dreams. Storytelling transformed her heartbreaking childhood into one stage in a much longer saga. Her suffering and then…
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